I still have trouble when someone says things like, "I literally fell out of my chair." I am tempted to ask, "Did it hurt?"

I literally reread “The Great Gatsby” last night and noticed, “But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding. He literally glowed…” I read it because some friends were discussing the book and I wanted to confirm my previous impression of what a nothing novel it is. Literally nothing interesting or believable happens in the book. I can’t understand why it was so popular. It is literally one trite event after the other with sound and fury definitely signifying nothing; to paraphrase Macbeth.

English is very much a work in progress, with firm, traditional rules sometimes revealed as being "more honor'd in the breach than the observance." It seems that hyperbole has literally been with us since communication began.

As Gailr points out the cited uses of "literally" are examples of hyperbole, a rhetorical device that seeks to create a strong impression and, according to Wikipedia, "is not meant to be take literally."

I completely accept that languages and meaning can change over time. "Literally" is one of many words that have become debased over time. I have my favourites that annoy me most and these are ones where numeric values have changed such as "decimate" = "reduce by one tenth" which is now used as "reduce by a considerable amount and possibly close to 'eliminate'"; "annihilate" = "reduce to nothing", now synonymous with the new meaning of "decimate". From a British perspective, I now have to use "billion" as meaning a mere thousand million instead of the million million it meant when I was young. I wonder how long it will take before "ten" really means "five" in current usage.I see that "literally" appears as "buchstäblich" in the German-language press. This can be taken to mean "letter by letter" or "literally". It used as loosely there as in English publications.

When will. Ten be five? Dunno. But my wife as teacher and I as social worker both made a little over $3600/yr in 1960 and lived comfortably. So. $1 has become at least $10 over the years, and more likely $15.

I came across the following in the NYTimes in the article entitled "End of Texas School's Book Ban Doesn't Mark the Last Chapter" (Nov. 29)

“We’ve been in this school district for 14 years, and this is the first time any of this has popped up,” said John Spicer, who has two children in the Highland Park district and one who has already graduated. “Kids had books figuratively pulled out of their hands.”

I can attest to Perry's statement about money that $10 or $15 used to be $1. Inflation seems to be rampant even among relatively stable currencies. If income inflates along with prices that is good for the average Tom, Jane and Harriet. It causes trouble when it is compared to the inflation of other currencies and found to be different. In 1980 the British pound and the American dollar were equal. But while I was earning $70,000 a year at the time, engineers of my rank were earning £25,000 pounds a year in England. I was making over twice what they were making. Now the tables have turned and I literally can't afford to go to England.